French Sales Outfit Charades Boards First UK Production ‘Lynn & Lucy’ Backed By BBC Films & BFI — EFM

EXCLUSIVE: French sales outfit Charades has boarded its first UK production in the shape of BBC Films and BFI-backed Lynn And Lucy, from first-time feature filmmaker Fyzal Boulifa and producer Camilla Bray (Oranges And Sunshine).

Written and directed by Boulifa, a two-time winner of the Illy Prize for Best Short Film at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, Bray produces for Rosetta Productions, with Ken Loach and Rebecca O’Brien’s Sixteen Films and Paris-based Vixens on board as associate producers. The film shot for five weeks in Harlow, UK at the end of 2018.

Currently in post-production, the debut is described to us as “a study of violence and hysteria at a societal level played out through the lives of two best friends, whose relationship is tested after a tragedy.” Starring are newcomer Roxanne Scrimshaw and Nichola Burley (Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights).

Pic was developed with support from BBC Films, Creative England and the BFI, with production co-financed by BBC Films and BFI in association with Lyp Sync and Charades. Executive producers are Eva Yates for BBC Films, Kristen Irving for BFI, Norman Merry for Lip Sync, Rebecca O’Brien for Sixteen Films, Carole Baraton for Charades and Richard Wolfe.

Paris-based sales outfit Charades, founded in 2017, this week launched American frontier film The World To Come, which will star Casey Affleck, Katherine Waterston, Vanessa Kirby and Jesse Plemons. Also on the slate are Coralie Fargeat’s Revenge, which premiered at Toronto’s Midnight Madness sidebar,  Ben Stassen’s 3D animation The Queen’s Corgi and Berlin Film Festival duo Shooting The Mafia and Buoyancy.

Upcoming BBC Films titles include Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival; Chiwetel Ejiofor’s directorial debut The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, which also premiered at Sundance; Judy, starring Renee Zellweger as the iconic Judy Garland; and Ammonite, starring Saoirse Ronan and Kate Winslet.